right?”
“Right.”
I looked up. “So whoever attacked them-let’s call them the pirates- would have to overpower four adults. One with an infant. Okay, that’s possible, I suppose, assuming they came aboard with weapons. But the pirates would have to control the Sea Dreamer, and the Ducanes, and whatever boat the pirates returned to shore on. The pirates had to get the two elder Ducanes overboard, then take Katy and Todd and the baby with them on the getaway boat-no, that’s not right. The infant wasn’t with them. The baby was taken from the house by Ronden. Wait, how does Baby Max Ducane get from the house to the Buick?”
“Maybe Ronden met these pirates somewhere, after he left Todd and Katy’s house,” O’Connor guessed. “Katy and Todd might have been dead already.”
I frowned. “That seems so odd-kidnapping a child just to bury it in the trunk of a car with its parents?”
He shrugged. “Can’t argue with the fact that his remains were found there, and that before he was killed, he was home with the nurse.”
“Okay, so let’s look at what happened to the adults. Let’s say the pirates begin by sending Thelma and Barrett Ducane overboard, too far out to sea on a stormy night for them to swim safely ashore.”
“Okay, I’m with you so far.”
“Then they force Katy and Todd aboard the pirates’ boat. They abandon the Sea Dreamer.”
“So now we have better odds for the pirates, and the reason there’s no blood on the Sea Dreamer.”
“Right.”
“The sailor or sailors kill Katy and Todd, put them in the trunk of the Buick, and meet Ronden, who has killed the baby, and toss the baby’s body in the trunk with his dead parents.” I shuddered. “I think I’m glad Ronden got killed a long time ago.”
“Except that whoever planned all of this is still around.”
I went back to the photos and came across one of a young blonde with her arm around a much older man. She was a pretty woman, but there was a certain hardness in her face that kept her from being more than that.
“The woman who was at the party with the giant?”
“Yes. Betty Bradford. When I showed that photo to Jack, he recognized her as the blonde who put her paws on him just before he got knocked out by Jergenson. She hasn’t been seen by anyone since the night of Katy’s birthday party.”
“You think she’s dead?”
“She was Gus Ronden’s mistress, and she was obviously at the party to set Jack up for a beating or worse. Given what happened to Jergenson and Ronden, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear she was dead, but I don’t know what became of her, Lew Hacker, or a couple of the others.”
“Who’s with her in this photo?”
“Her sugar daddy before Ronden. She must have been something, too. He’d call me every once in a while, wondering if I had learned what happened to her. He was crazy about her. The old fart even gave her a car.” A mischievous light came into his eyes. “Told me he had pink carpet installed on the floorboards because Betty here liked to wear pink underwear.”
I laughed, then suddenly sobered. “What kind of car did he buy her?”
He looked at his notes. “I don’t think he told me.” He frowned. “And stupidly, I didn’t ask.”
“Is Don Juan here still alive?”
O’Connor shook his head. “Died of a heart attack a few years after I met him.”
“Yesterday, when you were telling me about Gus Ronden, you said you went over to his house here in Las Piernas, right?”
“Yes.”
“His Imperial was gone-was there another car there, one that might have been hers?”
“No.”
“And you said Lew Hacker drove a Bel Air, right?”
He thumbed through his notes. “A turquoise and white Chevy Bel Air. It had been seen over at Gus Ronden’s place late that night-maybe sometime after the murders. Neither Hacker nor the car has been seen since then.”
I went toward the phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Calling Lefebvre.”
He didn’t stop me, but I could tell it was killing him not to. When Lefebvre answered, I said, “Phil, did you find any other bodies in the Buick?”
“Three not enough for you?”
“Plenty. Listen-was the carpet on the car’s floorboards pink?”
There was a long silence.
“Phil, you should have said, ‘What lunatic would have pink carpet in a car?’ or something like that, because you’ve just given me my answer.”
“Damn it to hell, if someone in the lab-”
“Not the lab’s fault. Listen, we know who owned that Buick before it was buried.”
O’Connor motioned me to shut up.
“We?” Lefebvre asked.
“O’Connor and I know,” I went on, picking up the phone and dodging O’Connor as he tried to hit the switch hook, “but the Express is going to have to be the first to tell the public who the owner is-understood?”
“And what if it’s not a good idea for the public to know that name just now?”
“Detective Lefebvre, do you want to read the name in tomorrow’s Express, or would you like it now?”
“I have a feeling that I am going to have to grant a favor to hear it.”
“Oh no. I’d just like our… spirit of openness and honesty to continue.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. All right.”
So I told him about Betty Bradford and her boyfriends. “If you hear from her or anyone who might know what became of her, you know where to reach me,” I added.
“I haven’t known you twenty-four hours, and already you are a nuisance.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” I replied, and hung up.
“What did he say?” O’Connor asked.
“That I’m a nuisance.”
O’Connor wholeheartedly agreed with this, and for about ten minutes- while I basically ignored him and thought about cars-he gave me shit about spilling my guts to a cop and promising to hold back a story, at which point I stopped him by saying, “Ronden’s body was the one you found near Lake Arrowhead, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m looking at these photos, and I have to tell you, Gus Ronden looks like a city boy to me. Why the cabin?”
“A meeting place, I’m fairly sure. Somewhere out of the public eye.”
“I wonder. You check to see who Ronden’s neighbors were in Arrowhead?”
“Yes.”
“Anyone from Las Piernas?”
“A few. Thelma and Barrett Ducane had a place. Lillian had two places. One that she and Harold bought. The other…” His voice caught, but he tried to go on. “Lillian had a…” He halted and looked away from me. After a moment he said, “She had a big place up there that had been in her family since the early 1920s. She gave that one to Katy-Katy was born there, so Lillian wanted her to have it for her young family. Katy willed it to Jack.” He told me the story of the will in Katy’s safe.
“Hmm. We’ll have to get back to that. Any other locals?”
He studied his notes, and after a few minutes of tense silence-during which I wasn’t sure if he was looking at the notes or just trying to get past the thought of Lillian’s lost hopes-he suddenly said, “I’ll be damned.”
